Fogel: It's been a busy time at the St. Augustine Record; here's why

Reader reaction to our changes

It’s been 10 days since our new look hit the driveways and one week since we implemented the paywall on staugustine.com. Today’s column is a debriefing of what’s happened during the past week and what’s ahead. I’ll also share some of the comments I’ve received.

I am proud of our journalists who had a very long week leading up to the launch. It was a lot of work and there was much to learn about the new format. The new design is actually easier to produce than the old one. That was my only mandate for the designer. We’ve not mastered it completely, but we’re close.

Imagine coming to work to perform your duties the same as you’ve done every day for the past year, then one day your boss gives you a new set of rules to do the same job.

That’s what our team faced Halloween night. Because we significantly changed the style and the layout of the pages, folks had to learn the new design on the fly. We set our deadlines earlier than usual because we knew it would take longer to design and output the pages. Every page was reviewed by Kathy Nelson, our designer Jeff Davis and me before it was printed. Staff members made multiple corrections to make sure their work conformed to the new guidelines. We finished about 20 minutes past deadline, which was not bad for the first night.

Why did we redesign the paper?

The obvious reason is that we had a leadership change here in June. It’s not uncommon for new publishers to put their own touches on the product. The last redesign of the paper was in 2007, so we were long overdue.

Many of you helped by participating in the reader survey in July. The content inside The Record also needed to be revised. We had gaping holes in our coverage of St. Johns County that needed to be addressed.

Let’s not forget that I’ve also asked you to pay more for the product — about $3 more a month for a seven-day subscription. The newspaper simply had to be better.

Reader reaction to our changes

Initial feedback has been good. The majority of comments have been positive.

Here’s an excerpt from one email: “First, I wish to report that here in North City, the sky has not fallen, nor did the print edition burn a hole in the driveway on its way to Hell, as some predicted.” I, too, was relieved to not be responsible for the next big bang.

The most negative comments I’ve received have related to black ink saturation levels. Initially, the black ink levels on some pages were low, causing the pages to reproduce very light and appear washed out. I’m happy to report that the fungus in the water system used to mix the ink has been neutralized, so we are back to even black levels across the pages. The production director equates this to the pH in a swimming pool being out of whack. A little chlorine did the trick.

Others have complained that I’ve taken away the syndicated columnists from the editorial pages. Boy is this is a tough job. I get complaints for running too many syndicated columns. Then, I run more local editorials and get complaints for too few syndicated columns. It’s a delicate balance.

However, I am making all those columnists available online for you to access. We’ve seen a surge in the number of letters to the editor and guests columns. Frankly, I prefer to publish those local voices in our print product rather than the syndicates.

We are still tweaking the mix of local/national content on Mondays and Tuesdays. Those days we have a heavier concentration of national news. That content balance is still a work-in-progress that we will quickly figure out.

Features moved, eliminated

Celebrity birthdays have moved to the Morning Brew page in the upper right corner. The Laugh Line was eliminated. Sorry Tony, you’ll have to Google that material.

My biggest worry of the week was the paywall. I kept having nightmares of the healthcare.gov debacle, praying that would not happen to us. It didn’t.

We had a couple of misfires on the digital platform, though. The updated mobile app and the new iPad app were not ready on Nov. 3. Apple was slow in approving those. They were available Nov. 6. The online ban on anonymous commenting — using real names — was also not ready for prime time. It worked well in the testing environment, but not on the live production server. Digital production manager, Eric Tompkins, did a great job in solving this mystery and getting it running Thursday.

I’ve had mixed commentary on identifying those who comment on staugustine.com. Most folks applaud it. We ask you to sign your name in a letter to the editor in print. It’s not much different posting an online comment to one of our news stories. I think it adds credibility to our site. The naysayers think it is an invasion of privacy and poses a threat to their personal security. You can still have a spirited debate while remembering The Golden Rule.

Making over the newspaper is like remodeling a house. You finish one project and spot more things that need to be done. Next up is giving our classified sections a face-lift. They need to be updated to look more consistent with the rest of the paper. The same goes for the obituaries. We’ll also be tackling staugustine.com in 2014 for an overhaul.

Thanks to everyone who called and emailed comments. Keep them coming. This process is still evolving.

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Appreciate you keeping us up-to-date and letting us know some of the trials everyone faced -- and yet produced as promised!

Looking forward to a modernized classified section.

I think it's just great that "Take Me Home" appears daily on p. 2 (animals up for adoption -- in color!) AND that you've kept the Sunday pet adoption column -- and now run color pix with that!

The quality of the photos is superb. I've enjoyed so many this past week. Some examples: Phil Whitley's dramatic scene of the temporarily vanished sail boat, Peter Willott's continuing weekly artistry capturing young student chefs and their culinary examples on the food page, and Daron Dean's impish look from behind at the FBI Evidence Response Team in training at the archaeological site on Spanish Street.

...my name continues to be nautico and not Bob Fliegel. I had expected to wake up one morning to discover that the screen name to real name conversion had occurred automatically. An erroneous assumption? Have previous registrants been grandfathered in with the new real name system/requirement? Hope not, as this would result in two classes of participants, the anonymous and those of us who applauded your decision to go the real name route.

The overhaul on the print edition was well done. It's pretty,....well designed, warm, fluffy, easy to read.

It seems just the threat of commentator's "real names" was enough, the comments part of the Record looks more like Bodie, California these days. If that was the desired outcome, it was definitely a success story. It's definitely safer, more controlled, predictable and more monochromatic. Ahh,....everybody loves beige.

The online overhaul is nice looking but seems more like just some tweaking of style sheets than substantive upgrades worthy of charging more for. Eye of the beholder thing I guess, or is it eye of the consumer ...

Separate sections for North beach, Town and South beach would have been interesting and useful. The Record does have publications for those areas but in the online version they seem to be like the red headed step children relegated to pdf versions instead of dedicated online sections.